Your PPC Campaign: See the Forest for the Trees

This week (albeit a short week, as we were closed Monday), I have talked to several of our advertisers regarding their activity. In one particular case, a gentleman called regarding having some of his traffic sources blocked completely because of what he deemed to be “bad clicks.” I talked with the advertiser for a few minutes to assess his situation, and examined his campaign choices. I noticed some disparities between his thoughts and the reality of his situation.

For example, his ad for a gift card site was set to all countries, when, in fact, this was an offer only redeemable in the U.S. This caused him to receive searches in several languages that were not relevant to his content. If the advertiser had started testing his ad in the geographic area he was able to promote in, he may have saved himself money towards his operating budget.

Also, he used the store name as a keyword, and set this to broad keyword match. This caused his ad to receive several searches for “store hours,” “location,” “zip code,” “kiosk,” and “shipping.” We encourage the use of broad match in order to gain as much traffic as possible, but we also suggest supplementing broad-natured keywords with negative keywords to filter away possible irrelevant searches.

The advertiser made some spelling and grammar errors in his Default Ad Title and Description. Typically, you do not want to have the first message that your audience sees to be unprofessional or misleading. This is a direct reflection of your business, and can turn possible visitors off from submitting their information. If you are relying on gathering this information in order to gain commissions, it is most beneficial to have a clear, enticing call to action.

Lastly, the gentleman added keywords directly from Google’s keyword suggestion tool for the bulk of his campaign. I believe it is a good idea to use this tool in order to gain new ideas for keywords. You may find, however, that our keyword suggestion tool differs in what is available in our network, and may have options for keywords that would be more effective. I suggested that he take some time to consider all of these suggestions, and make some changes to his campaign.

My point was that simply adding blocks to traffic may not be the answer. I have heard a lot about the quality of our traffic for our users, but I would posit some factors that may be at work:

1)      We are not Google. We have a smaller network that covers the 20% of the traffic that larger search engines do not cover. Thus, our traffic levels are smaller, giving the impression of low quality. However, the traffic we do have has historically converted and converted well, and our costs are lower, which means that you have a chance at a much better ROI. We function differently in terms of ad flexibility and reporting, but our tools allow you to take the quality traffic we do have and create more opportunity for conversion.

2)      Ad quality is key. Put yourself in the mind of a surfer. You visit your site with an open mind. Would you enter your personal information into this site? Why? Is the product you are promoting that attractive, or an impulse buy? Does your ad help create that action to buy, or does it do the opposite? The traffic you may be receiving may look like “low quality” when in fact visitors are clicking onto your site, and then quickly clicking away when they do not find what they are looking for. This is direct connection between keyword and ad quality. What would you do if you clicked onto a site, expecting a certain item, and then not finding it?

3)      The devil is in the details. If you take some time to review what we have to offer in terms of optimization tools, and how they can positively impact your efforts, you may see that you can more easily grow your business. Be sure that your campaign is structured to help enhance your ad, and not be a detriment. Items like campaign scheduling, negative keywords, daily budgets, and solid ad copy help to sell your ad. Don’t disregard these opportunities.

For the advertiser I spoke with, I suggested instead of throwing up blocks (which could potentially choke your traffic levels) to think more organically. How can I get similar results without the use of blocks? I told him to consider such factors as keyword choice, the addition of negative keywords, to check his searches through the keyword report in order to evaluate his keywords, and to correct the ad copy in his description and title. I didn’t promise that he would see immediate results, but he would certainly be more set up for success than at the start of his campaign.

The suggestions I gave the advertiser above could be implemented by any of our advertisers. I have written at length on our tools, and encourage the advertisers I contact to visit our blog for insight. So that instead of simply adding blocks to a campaign in order to gain a quick fix, consider instead the campaign choices themselves. You may be surprised by what you discover.